John Summerson
John Newenham Summerson CH CBE ( born November 25, 1904 in Darlington, County Durham, England; † November 10, 1992, Camden, London, England) was a leading British art historian of the 20th century. It dealt primarily with the history of British architecture.
Life
Summersons ancestors were closely linked to the industry of his home. The grandfather worked for the Stockton and Darlington Railway, the world's first passengers were transported by rail. His father founded in 1869 in Darlington, the steel company Thomas Summerson and Sons.
Summerton attended Harrow School and then the University College London, from which he graduated in 1928 with a Bachelor exam. The following year he went as a lecturer in Architecture at the Edinburgh College of Art From 1934 to 1941 he was deputy editor of The Architect and Building News, and then four Jehre long director of the conservation authority National Buildings Record
After the Second World War Summerson taught history of architecture at the Architectural Association and at Birkbeck College, University of London. 1958/1959 he taught as Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford University and in 1966 was elected to the Slade Chair in Cambridge. In the years 1945-1984 he was curator of Sir John Soane 's Museum in London.
Work
Summersons Books on Architecture in England of kings George III. and George VI. , the Georgian Era, are today as well as his books about Christopher Wren, Inigo Jones, The Classical Language of Architecture and The Architecture of the Eighteenth Century still standard works for laymen and scientists. In the latter book, he noted the importance of the French architect Étienne -Louis Boullée for the development of the reviver of architecture in the period around the year 1800, Claude- Nicolas Ledoux, back.
Summerson belonged over the years on various committees, such as the Royal Fine Art Commission, the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments and Historical Manuscripts Commission on.
Summerson coined bristol - byzantine for the Moorish-Byzantine style mixing from Bristol the term. He was not always and everywhere a proponent of preservation '. Thus he spoke, for example, for the demolition of 16 houses from the period of Georgian in the Fitzwilliam Street in Dublin by the Irish Electricity Supply Board (ESB ) from. In the street today is still a home, and it serves as the Museum Number Twenty Nine Lower Fitzwilliam Street.